– Dave Dye

PODCAST: Alan Brooking.

I’m guessing you’re not as familiar with that name as were with others I’ve posted?But you’ll be familiar with his work.Saatchi’s ‘Pregnant Man’?BBH’s ‘Black Sheep’ poster?CDP’s ‘Wolf In Sheeps Clothing’?
Yes? All shot by Alan.
Because they’re such a fantastic ideas, they look as though anybody could’ve shot them.
The images are so simple and clear you can’t imagine done them any other way.
But each is the end result of a series of choices.
Take a look at the casting contacts from the the ‘Pregnant Man’ ad, the alternative models look ridiculous, but they didn’t on January 21st 1970.
Look at the ‘Black’ sheep ad Alan shot for John Hegarty (and Barbra Nokes), just a bunch of sheep with a black one plonked in the middle?
Nope.
If shot side-on, they’d blend into each other after the first row and not fill the poster.
If shot from above you wouldn’t see them in that classic, side-on profile.
So Alan used his map reading skills (acquired through Rally driving) to find a steep incline, so that the sheep rose up, filling the poster with graphic sheep profiles, almost like cut outs, but better for being shot for real.
Then there’s the ‘Wolf In Sheeps Clothing’; How hard can it be to fling a sheep’s pelt over a wolf?
Very, as it turns out.
Wolves don’t like modelling, so Alan borrowed some sheep pictures from a friend, photographer Adrian Flowers, then comped the two together.
In Alan’s words, he wasn’t a photographer, he was ‘an adman with a camera’, simply trying to bring the ideas to life.
He’d learnt how to do this from his years as a top art director at CPV and CDP, getting to work on a regular basis with photographers like Elliott Erwitt, Duffy and Terrence Donovan.
We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

ART DIRECTOR.
Colman Prentiss & Varley.BEA.
(A young studio boy stands in as a model, his name was Paul Arden. Below, you can see them both at work at CPV.)
Carlsberg.

Collett Dickenson Pearce.Lancia.Aer Lingus.
(Terence Donovan shooting the above ad.)Ronson.Lady Ronson.
Flu-O-Pep.
Chemstrand.
Just one ad ended up being made from that campaign, it featured a car.
So Alan, being a car nut, decided to design a car for the shoot.
This one.